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Humankind Makes Last Stand Against Machine

Posted by michael on from the smart-money-is-on-the-computer dept.

MrZeebo writes "According to this Financial Times story, Garry Kasparov has begun another match against a computer chess program on Sunday, this time playing against the Israeli-developed Deep Junior. Kasparov is the highest-rated chess player of all time, and lost to Deep Blue in 1997. According to the article, Deep Junior, despite evaluating less moves per minute than Deep Blue, is considered to be a superior chess player. The match will span 6 games, the last one being February 7th." Kasparov has won the first game.

3 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. He should switch games... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    He should switch to Go. Even the greatest computers can't compare to an average player.

    Go is far better suited to the way a human brain works - pattern recognition, neural networks and all that.

    Of course, once a computer arrives that can beat us at Go, then it'll be time to rethink a lot of things :)

  2. Re:A different test: man versus machine by Scarblac · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It seems to me that if you want to pit man versus machine you should pick something that is easy for a man to do.

    Seems to me that if you want to have some contest, you pick something that they're both about equally good at. So we don't let people run against cars, and we don't let machines recognize faces against humans.

    When Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, it was a huge surprise, he played weakly. Kramnik drew Deep Fritz 3-3 last year. Kasparov is the favorite again in this match, and leads 1-0. It's balanced.

    What makes it more fun is that computers and people approach the game in a totally different way, but the best computers are almost as good as the best humans. This is the right time to be having these contests.

    --
    I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
  3. So, what does this mean? by Millennium · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Garry Kasparov was beaten by Deep Blue. This means one of several possibilities:

    1) Computers are more intelligent than humans.
    2) Computers can be made to play better chess than humans.
    3) Computers can be programmed to beat Garry Kasparov.
    4) Chess can be reduced to a set of mathematical computations, which a computer can then perform faster than a human.

    So what is it? And how do you know which one (or ones) are correct? Just a thought, since I think a lot of people are being overly alarmist.